Capturing your thinking

Before you go on any further, consider how you are going to capture and reflect on your learning.

Keeping a learning log or portfolio

A learning log or portfolio is a useful way to help you reflect on your learning. The aim of a personal learning log is to regularly look back on what you have learned and articulate your thoughts and feelings about the experience.

You might also find it useful to record the answers to your tasks and keep them all in one place.

A quick way to capture your reflections is to use the following questions as prompts:

What’s good, useful or interesting about …?

What questions have arisen …?

What actions will you take to … (further develop, apply, etc) …?

You could simply record your log entries in a notebook, or you might prefer to use one of the many online tools and apps that are available.

By following any of the links below you will be taken to a third party website. On this website you may be asked to submit some information about yourself. Please make sure you are familiar with the terms and conditions and privacy policy of the third party website before submitting your information.

Whether you follow the links below and submit your personal information or not, your course progress will not be affected.

Blogging and journaling tools

Blogging and journaling tools such as Blogger, Tumblr, Wix and WordPress are designed to be updated regularly, which makes them an ideal tool for keeping a learning log. You can usually choose to publish them publicly, or keep them private to yourself and anyone you choose to invite. FutureLearn has provided some useful guidance about using blogging tools to support your reflective practice.

Journaling apps

You might find an app useful if you own a smartphone or tablet and prefer to record your thoughts on the go. An example of an extremely simple journaling app is Day One.

Note-taking tools and apps

Note-taking tools provide digital ‘notebooks’ where you can save and organise your notes and to-do lists. Some tools enable you to clip from websites, include images, collaborate with others, and even convert your handwriting to text.

If you are interested in using these features for your learning log you could investigate EverNote or Google Keep.

If you are a registered Coventry University student you have access to Office 365 and you might like to explore using OneNote, which has a lot of additional functionality.

Portfolio tools

Portfolio tools are designed to help you collect and showcase your work. They have lots of functionality, including the ability to upload a variety of file types and multimedia, so it is easy to keep information from lots of different sources in one place.

You can choose to keep your portfolio private, make all or part of it publicly available, or share it with specific people.